Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Root2Res (Root2Resilience: Root phenotyping and genetic improvement for rotational crops resilient to environmental change)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2022-09-01 al 2024-02-29
As agricultural systems face more and more constraints due to climate change, identifying and developing new crop cultivars able to make production more resilient is a priority. In this context, root systems play a major role as an essential component of the tolerance against abiotic stress (water deficit or excess, nutrition deficiency) and for their contribution to carbon storage in soils. Addressing root traits for breeders, geneticists and agronomists is a real challenge that needs efficient tools: root phenotyping tools both in field and controlled conditions, genetic tools with a set of relevant markers and genetic resources and modelling tools to extrapolate the results in other environments and agricultural contexts.
In this context, Root2Res will deliver novel tools to help design climate resilient crop systems that are adapted to a range of environments across Europe. Beyond the project, these future-proofed systems will provide plentiful, healthy, and nutritious food from crops that are resilient to stress, resource efficient and go some way to mitigating the impact of climate change by sequestering carbon in soils. Root2Res will then contribute to more sustainable and environmentally friendly cropping systems for Europe.
Key to the Root2Res approach is the design of new tools to evaluate root traits and understand the genetic control of root and rhizosphere function associated with adaptation to climate change and elucidate how these traits interact with the rhizosphere microbiome to help develop and evaluate more sustainable cultivars. Root2Res will focus on three main annual crop families: cereals, potatoes, and grain legumes based on their major role in food security and human diets. Root2Res will also investigate the potential role of emerging crops (i.e. sweet potato, and lentil) to enhance resilience to environmental change. In addition, Root2Res will develop a unique research framework where we will assess an extended root phenotype. Critically, we will measure trait heritability and plasticity to environmental stress in our set of reference crops, for which multiple genotypes are accessible for experimentation, and in a range of agroecosystems. Focussing on multiple stress (water deficit or excess), and interactions with other stresses (temperature, reduced nutrient availability), Root2Res will deliver fundamentally innovative genetic and modelling toolboxes that can be deployed for the development of climate smart crops. This will be achieved by bringing together an interdisciplinary team, comprising crop geneticists, plant physiologists, microbiologists, agronomists and breeders from across Europe to develop these tools that would allow selection and breeding of improved genotypes and their field evaluation in various environments.
In this context, Root2Res will deliver novel tools to help design climate resilient crop systems that are adapted to a range of environments across Europe. Beyond the project, these future-proofed systems will provide plentiful, healthy, and nutritious food from crops that are resilient to stress, resource efficient and go some way to mitigating the impact of climate change by sequestering carbon in soils. Root2Res will then contribute to more sustainable and environmentally friendly cropping systems for Europe.
Key to the Root2Res approach is the design of new tools to evaluate root traits and understand the genetic control of root and rhizosphere function associated with adaptation to climate change and elucidate how these traits interact with the rhizosphere microbiome to help develop and evaluate more sustainable cultivars. Root2Res will focus on three main annual crop families: cereals, potatoes, and grain legumes based on their major role in food security and human diets. Root2Res will also investigate the potential role of emerging crops (i.e. sweet potato, and lentil) to enhance resilience to environmental change. In addition, Root2Res will develop a unique research framework where we will assess an extended root phenotype. Critically, we will measure trait heritability and plasticity to environmental stress in our set of reference crops, for which multiple genotypes are accessible for experimentation, and in a range of agroecosystems. Focussing on multiple stress (water deficit or excess), and interactions with other stresses (temperature, reduced nutrient availability), Root2Res will deliver fundamentally innovative genetic and modelling toolboxes that can be deployed for the development of climate smart crops. This will be achieved by bringing together an interdisciplinary team, comprising crop geneticists, plant physiologists, microbiologists, agronomists and breeders from across Europe to develop these tools that would allow selection and breeding of improved genotypes and their field evaluation in various environments.
Stakeholder workshops were organized and a literature review completed to produce a list of ideotype traits (WP1). A series of trials were conducted in three agroclimatic zones to evaluate and adapt existing root phenotyping tools. These results led to the development of two phenotyping toolboxes to quantify 1) root architectural traits applicable in both field and controlled environment trials and 2) rhizosphere traits in controlled conditions experiments. In addition, root phenotyping workshops were organized in France, Morrocco, and Germany to facilitate knowledge transfer and eventually ease the implementation of innovative phenotyping tools (WP2). Importantly, populations of all crops have been defined and agreed (WP3). Seed multiplication for the three main species was carried out, which was distributed to all relevant sites for the 2023 and 2024 trials (WP2, WP4). A list of above- and below-ground traits to be measured for cereals, legumes and tubers have also been agreed as well as the plan for the 2024 trials (WP2-WP4). In addition, we have adopted a definition of plasticity and developed a standard approach for quantifying it (WP5). We have also produced a mesocosm system to measure plasticity and tested it in initial experiments to measure plasticity in roots, and root transcriptional and metabolomic response. The approaches and platforms for the development of existing and novel models have been agreed (WP6). Potential hypotheses and mechanisms to be targeted by models have been formulated, and opportunities for using data generated in other WPs, and for models to support experimental data analysis in Root2Res have been discussed.
In the first 18 months of the project, Root2Res produced a range of innovative results forming the foundations for three novel toolboxes. Firstly, the root phenotyping toolbox comprises standard operating procedures for 4 root phenotyping field methods (shovelomics, soil coring, minirhizotron and soil pit) adapted to our main crops, a range of controlled conditions root phenotyping approaches and a novel exudate and microbiome joint sampling technique. Secondly, the genetic toolbox has been enriched by a new root ideotype definition, novel information and rhizosphere traits for sweet potato and barley, novel metrics for measuring root traits plasticity and novel populations for barley, potato and faba bean. Innovative development of models for rhizosphere processes and root architecture in novel crops will directly contribute to the modelling toolbox.